Q&A: Sam Erickson and Jim James Discuss Still Moving

Jim James, Golden. James recording the song “Golden” during the It Still Moves sessions in Shelbyville, Kentucky, 2003. Photograph by Sam Erickson.

It’s no secret that I love My Morning Jacket. I’ve written about them before (here and here), and I’m sure I’ll write about them again. To me, they represent the best of the 70s arena-rock tradition epitomized by Led Zeppelin, Crazy Horse, and Queen. They’re weird, wild, and fearless; they have heart and chops.

The band still hasn’t reached household-name status, but its cult of fervent admirers is growing steadily. For every hipster who peeled off after hearing 2008’s defiantly uncool Evil Urges, there are three new devotees (yes, I’m making these numbers up) slowly working their way up and down the discography, from 2001’s rural and elemental At Dawn to 2005’s plugged-in breakthrough, Z.

Sam Erickson is one of the devotees, but he’s a collaborator too, having photographed the band extensively for the past seven years or so. Still Moving, a collection of his portraits of the band—many shot while filming the 2006 concert movie Okonokos and other projects—will be on display at Manhattan’s Morrison Hotel Gallery beginning tomorrow. Last week, I talked to Erickson and My Morning Jacket’s singer, Jim James, about taxidermy, the lost joy of getting high while listening to vinyl, and the importance of imitating B movies. Here’s how it went.

Michael Hogan: So Sam was the director of—I’m not sure how to say it—Okonokos?

Jim James: Oh-kuh-NO-kos, yeah. I’m not one of those guys that’s really into pronunciation. I’ve got such a weird last name [he was born James Olliges Jr.]; I’m used to hearing people pronounce it all different ways.

O.K., Oh-kuh-NO-kos it is. What other projects are going to be represented in the gallery?

Sam Erickson: Well, I did a lot of documenting of the band over the years. The first time I worked with them extensively was when they were recording the album It Still Moves [2003], which was their first major studio release.

I was down there doing a mini-documentary on the band and the cover shoot for the album. Jim wanted to have a big bear on the cover, so a lot of the photos from that session involve this big, crazy bear that we rented from a place down there.

This is in Kentucky?

James: Yeah, it was out at our old studio, which was on my cousin’s grandparents’ farm, in Shelbyville, Kentucky. We rented this big taxidermic grizzly bear, and it’s so funny when I think back on it, because you could just, like, Photoshop that kind of shit in. But we didn’t.

Erickson: If we had tried to do it digitally, it just wouldn’t have been as cool.

James: Yeah, I agree. I’m so glad we didn’t. But it’s hilarious to look back, in retrospect, and think about seven grown men hefting a stuffed grizzly bear up through this hole in the side of a barn.

Jim, was there a moment when you said, “I want this guy to be the photographer who documents us?”

James: Yeah, well, it was just so easy working with Sam, and he does a really good job of just letting you do whatever you’re going to do.

Erickson: My background is in social sciences. My father was an anthropologist, and I spent a lot of time as a child in the Andes, in South America. That imprinted on me the concept of how to go into a place and, rather than interjecting yourself and your agenda on top of it, realizing that it’s more about observing. I did a lot of observing of these guys before I really took what I think are the best pictures that I’ve taken of them.

This is not the kind of band where you can go in and say, “I’ve got this vision for how I want you to look.” This is a band with a very developed visual aesthetic already.

My Morning Jacket, Okonokos soundcheck.

On Okonokos, you guys were collaborating on a whole aesthetic. You were creating a world, even. How did that all come about?

James: We didn’t want to do just another concert film. We wanted to add an aspect of the surreal in there.

We had played at this festival in Japan, at Fuji Rock, and our stage was in this place called “The Field of Heaven,” which was a really beautiful stage out in the middle of the woods, with all these disco balls and stuff hung up in the trees. It was a really, really moving place to play, so we were talking to Sam and thought, Why don’t we try to create that kind of effect inside the venue?

We ended up doing it at the Fillmore in San Francisco. The Fillmore is such a holy place, but there’s been 70 million records done there. So we didn’t want to just call it Live at the Fillmore. I wanted to give it some kind of title, and the title just kind of came from a dream. I remember waking up and looking at this piece of paper next to my bed, and I’d written that word on the piece of paper. So I Googled the word, and it turns out it was the last unincorporated town in America. Which is really weird. It’s like in Virginia or somewhere. [The town of Okonoko is in West Virginia.]

Then I wanted to add some other aspect to the film where, when you got it and you popped it in, you almost thought, Did I get the wrong DVD from the factory?

I remember having that feeling, actually.

James: That’s awesome. So I wanted to set up a situation that confused the viewer but also led the viewer through the film, following this character, and have a kind of shocking, hilarious B-movie horror ending.

And that was another fun thing that Sam was into. He’s just a good sport. There should never be, in any working relationship, somebody that says, “No, that’s not possible.” Because anything is possible. We were like, “Let’s bring in an alpaca, and put it in a Victorian house, and dress everybody up.” And Sam was just like, “All right. Let’s do it.” And we were like, “Let’s dress up the stage like a forest.” “O.K.” “Let’s have a guy get killed by a trashcan.” It was like 3 in the morning, and we’re out in the middle of the park with the bear costume, some guy getting mauled, and blood and chicken meat everywhere. It was hilarious.

Erickson: I think magic and mystery are central components to the enjoyment of My Morning Jacket’s music. That’s a large part of where Jim is coming from as an artist: that life isn’t about putting yourself in a box of any kind, that there’s boundless kinds of expression and boundless kinds of music. Tying different times together is just a nice way to say, “We’re all everywhere at once.” and if you open your eyes to what’s out there, you know, you’ll get a lot more from the music. I don’t know, Jim, if you agree with that statement—

James: Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that.

Speaking of different times, back in the old days you’d have a vinyl record, and you’d have all these images—the cover, a big sleeve that you can pull out. But now there’s all these new ways to incorporate imagery: you can do a DVD, you can put videos on the Internet. Jim, how do you think the rise of digital technology changes music’s relationship with visual images?

James: I feel like you just have more mediums to work with now. So in some ways it’s intimidating, but in other ways it’s really great, because you’re like, “O.K., there’s x number of people who really want the vinyl experience, so let’s give them that experience as best we can. And then there’s x number of people who want a DVD, so let’s make the best DVD we possibly can,” and so on and so forth. And if there’s some dude who just hears one of our songs and wants to download it, that’s cool too. It just feels good to be in there somewhere, making some sense to somebody’s mind.

I think we all kind of wish that it was the golden age, and we were back in the 70s, when nobody has cell phones or computers and everyone just gets high and listens to vinyl all day, but it’s not, you know? It’s not the 70s anymore, so you just have to deal with what you have. In some ways that’s really cool, ’cause we’ve got a lot more than they had in the 70s, and in some ways it’s really bad, because we’ve got a lot less attention.

Erickson: But these guys don’t mail in any of this stuff. All of it’s thought out, from the single to the DVD to the album. It all comes from that classic perspective of trying to give a visual end and a song together and create a world and create an experience, and that’s something I always appreciate about working with them.

Sam, you’ve worked with a lot of musicians. What is it about musicians as opposed to, say, actors that inspires you?

Erickson: I’m not going to knock actors, but I find the process of musicians to be much more interesting. And in terms of this show, I tried to capture the entire spectrum of the work that I’ve done with the band. So it wasn’t just live, or just in the studio, or just on the road. I think there’s a piece of just about every kind of photograph I’ve done with the band, and that was my goal—to give a well-rounded look at the nature of this rewarding collaborative relationship that I’ve managed to form with what I think is the best band going right now.

I have one last question for you guys. We’ve all heard people complain that rock ’n’ roll is getting old, it’s become superficial, derivative, and commercial, it doesn’t mean anything anymore. Sam, has the experience of working with My Morning Jacket given you any perspective on that?

Erickson: Well, I’ve photographed a lot of different artists over the years, and I certainly have photographed artists that probably fall into the trap that you’re talking about. But this is a band that does everything in their power to escape any kind of categorization or niche marketing or whatever the fuck. I really admire that about them, that they’re never gonna let anybody tell them who they are.

James: It’s a trick. And a lot of people get duped. There are a lot of bands out there that are packaged and sold and crafted to be a “typical rock band”— from the story line to the backstage antics to the predictable riffs. Those bands are out there, and unfortunately a lot of labels and promotion machines think that’s what the public wants. They think the public wants something that they already recognize.

But I just don’t think that’s true. I just realized a long time ago: anything that you do, somebody’s gonna like it, and somebody’s gonna hate it. And it doesn’t matter who you are. If you’re Bob Dylan or you’re just starting out—somebody’s gonna like it, and somebody’s gonna hate it. So knowing that kind of liberates you to just say, “Fuck it. I’m just gonna do this, it’s gonna be fun, and hopefully more people will like it than hate it.”